Pages tagged "w-medium"

The Fabian Society’s Development Programme provides one year paid appointments, which are designed to help people who are new to politics to gain skills and experience. The programme is streamed by job function to support participants gain understanding and skills in the area of their choice.

Within the Development Programme, we are now looking for an Events Assistant to support our busy events team. Fabian events consistently attract very senior speakers, and we need someone able to work calmly under pressure and to negotiate the complex organisational challenges of arranging an events program at a leading think-tank.

With our audiences often numbering hundreds of people, a genuine and demonstrable interest in events management is vital. In return, we’ll train and support you to deliver smaller projects of your own, and to make sure that at the end of the year long contract, you are qualified and ready to take your next steps in events management.

People from backgrounds that are under-represented in Westminster and at the Fabian Society are particularly encouraged to apply. This includes women, disabled people and people from low-income or minority ethnic backgrounds. Appointments are based on merit alone.

The position in summary

Events and Office Assistant The post-holder will work directly with the Partnerships and Events Manager on all aspects of events delivery, including event briefing, speaker booking, marketing, venue logistics and post-event dissemination. Additionally you will support the Head of Finance and Operations on specified organisation-wide administrative tasks. We are looking for someone who is efficient, calm under pressure, a good multi-tasker, has an eye for detail and is motivated by the practicalities of project delivery. Duties will include:

Office management: up to 20% of the role will consist of office support and inquiry response, including managing office systems and procedures, reception service, ordering supplies and overseeing the office environment.

Duration: Fixed 1 year contract

Salary: £16,100 plus 7% pension contribution

Hours: Mon – Fri, 10am – 6pm

Your application should arrive no later than 9am Mon 11th of August 2014.

26-year old Young Fabian executive member, Alvin Carpio, has completed a six week tour of the United States as part of a prestigious fellowship programme. His trip, which took him to New York, Boston, Washington DC and Chicago, looked to understand how community leaders have campaigned for social change to help the poor, young offenders, the homeless, and the socially excluded in the United States. Carpio met political leaders in the United States Capitol, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and sought to discover what is being done in the United States to combat the ever-growing gap between rich and poor. His ultimate goal is to return to the UK to develop a new set of young leaders that represent marginalised economic and social groups.

The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust is funding Carpio’s work. The trust, founded in 1965, aims to provide opportunities for British citizens to go abroad on a project of their choosing to advance themselves through the knowledge and skills they gain. The Trust wants their fellows to return to the UK and put into practice what they have learnt.

Each year the trust rewards over 100 British citizens for a wide range of projects from a total of 1,200 applicants. A Fellow must travel overseas for between four to eight weeks, and past award winners have come from a variety of specialisms, including medicine, conservation, sport, women and youth. Carpio’s interest in leadership in young people is rooted in his upbringing in East London and his association with UpRising, an East London based youth engagement charity – whose patrons include Ed Miliband – and also boasts of East London MP Rushanara Ali as one of its founding partners.

Carpio currently works as a Public Affairs Officer for Catch22, a national social business that helps young people and families in difficult personal circumstances turn their lives around. Carpio has already appeared on CNN commenting on the London riots, and blogs on the Huffington Post. He has also launched a blog where he will wrote about his work in the United States (http://www.theexcluded.wordpress.com).

Commenting, Carpio said: ‘I am delighted and honoured to have been chosen as one of this year’s Winston Churchill Travel Fellows. Growing up in Newham gave me an insight into the importance of helping talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds reach their potential in life. I am passionate about forming a new movement in the UK that gives people from all social backgrounds the opportunity to reach leadership positions, whether that is in business, politics, or civil society. There is much to learn from American politics and civil society, but they too have a lot to learn from our civic institutions and welfare state.’

‘I also hope my story will encourage other young people to take advantage of fantastic schemes such at The Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship and the UpRising Leadership Programme that have helped me and others so much.'

Across Europe all political parties are dealing with the rise of far-right and Eurosceptic parties. It is also increasingly difficult to get foreign affairs issues on the agenda of mainstream political parties, unless it is in the form of a battle cry against the European Union or any form of immigration.

On Monday 7th, the Young Fabians hosted and Internationalism Ideas Series event to discuss some of these issues. We heard from the experiences of Pierre Kanuty from the French Parti Socialiste, Samuli Sinisalo from the Finnish SDP and Mattia Guidi from the LUISS Guido Carli School of Political Science in Rome. All speakers elaborated on the difficulty of getting foreign affairs issues on the agenda citing the complexity of many of the issues, the perception of their irrelevance to everyday life and particularly the EU’s ability to elicit negative association and emotion.

Despite the differences in the composition of far-right and Eurosceptic parties across Europe, a number of commonality were striking. Constituency of voters, shifting patterns of voting behaviour, disproportionate amounts of media coverage, a charismatic leader who is less extreme than much of the party and the use of EU election as a protest vote have all been contributory factors to the rise of UKIP-style parties, particularly in France and Finland.

The panellists also spoke about tactics that have been helping to tackle the rise of these parties – focussing on the politicians and the consequences of their voting records rather than attacking the voters; not compromising and playing games to court voters but focussing on your own positive message; and presenting a vision of change but also of stability.

There was a lot of positive feeling about the ability of centre-left parties to win the argument about what type of society we want to build for the future and our common values of human rights, but a recognition that more work needs to be done to analyse the shape of the emerging right. In the end, this will require us to find a way to serve the constituency of people who are drawn away from mainstream parties by understanding and addressing their needs as socialists in the wake of the crisis.

On Wednesday the 14th FEPS Young Academic Network conference opened in Vienna, Austria. Young Fabians Secretary, Alexander Adranghi and member Richard Penny participated at the conference.

The five day conference focused on building the network and providing a peer-review on submitted paper abstracts before arranging into working groups based on common research interest. It marks the beginning of a collaborative research process within the working groups that will lead to the published papers.

The Foundation of European Progressive Studies or FEPS is a publicly-funded pan-European thinktank which consist of a network of member organisations across Europe. It provides independant research for the Party of European Socialists (PES). It establishes an intellectual crossroad between social democracy and the European project, putting fresh thinking at the core of its action. As a platform for ideas , FEPS works in close collaboration with social democratic organisations, and in particular national foundations and thinktanks across Europe, to tackle the challenges that Europe faces today. The Fabian Society is one of the three UK members.

The FEPS Young Academics Network was established in March 2009 with an aim to gather promising progressive PhD candidates and young PhD researchers ready to use their academic experience in a debate about the Next Europe. Realised with the support of Renner Institut, the project has gathered in its course more than 50 members. Their exchanges and interdisciplinary research have resulted in a number of stimulating studies, providing a relevant contribution to the European progressive movement.

The Fabian Society is seeking to recruit a Researcher or Senior Researcher to drive forward our wide-ranging and influential programme of policy research. We are seeking someone who is highly entrepreneurial, with the ability to form influential relationships, secure funding for projects and achieve impact for their research. We expect excellent skills in desk-based policy research and report writing, an understanding of social research methods and expert knowledge in at least one field of social, economic or environmental policy.

The Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, in partnership with the Fabian Society, is recruiting for a one year Tax Reform Research Fellow.

The Fellow will work on research and publication projects promoting radical tax reform in the United Kingdom. This is a unique opportunity for the development of a researcher with the potential to become a radical but credible voice on tax reform issues.

Limited edition Young Fabian wristbands are available at Fabian and Young Fabian Society events. These wrist bands have been endorsed by Labour heavy weights such as Andy Burnham and Ed Balls, so be sure to pick one up. The wrist bands cost £2 and the money goes towards supporting the research and work of the Young Fabians. Thank you, and never forget to, "Educate, Agitate, Organise"

On 28 June, Chair of the Young Fabians James Hallwood moderated a panel debate entitled "Labour's pledgecard offer for young people" at the Fabian Society Summer Conference. The panellists were Bex Bailey, Young Labour's representative on the Labour National Executive Committee, Uma Kumaran, prospective parliamentary candidate for Harrow East, and Rushanara Ali MP, Shadow Minister for Education.

The lively discussion covered a range of issues Labour must address in order to win the trust and votes of young people, including vocational education, graduate jobs, lowering the voting age, and improving schools.

On 23 June, the Young Fabian China Programme continued with a panel discussion in parliament on the implications of the growing economic impact of China.

Jonathan Fenby, former Editor of The Observer and the South China Morning Post opened the event by placing recent developments placed into a historical context. Lise Bertelson, Executive Director of the China-Britain Business Council gave an account of the business perspective, whilst Tim Page, Senior Policy Advisor at the TUC spoke about their recent report The Way of the Dragon. The event was chaired by the Young Fabians International Officer Joel Mullan.

The discussion and subsequent Q+A covered a wide range of issues, including the significance of the recent visit by the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, the visibility of British business within China, sources of potential growth in trade, and the implications of increasing Chinese assertiveness.

Today aired the first a new series on Radio 4 to discuss and debate institutions that affect British life. In this episode focused on Trade Unions, Stephanie Akomeah our Under 20's officer was invited to join the discussions on trade union's appeal to young people in the 21st century.